Fallout: Equestria - Of Taint and Colts

Chapter Three - "The Again"

I wake up to a crisp, sunny day, numb and thoughtless in the morning light. The tent I am in is white in colour, blowing around with a strong breeze. A fire in the middle of the sparse tent, filled with a couple scrounged blankets, foamies and a couple boxes of jerky and other dried foodstuffs, keeps the canvas shelter warm and dry. A bag of jerky and a bag of dried veggies rest in front of me. To my left, a disturbed makeshift bed tells of an occupant who has left.

I begin the arduous process of standing up. Immediately, I note that my joints and my back are both stiff. I begin stretching to work out the kinks, first extending my forelegs and arching my back, then doing the same for my hind legs. I twist my neck in many ways, and do the same for my hooves and the rest of my body. A chorus of snaps, pops, and cracks sound off in a harmony of relief that slowly washes over my body, allowing my body to erect to a comfortable standing position. I deliver to my physical tank one last stretch that allowed me to shed the rest of my discomfort before nipping the bag of dried whatever that I was certain wasn’t meat and tearing it open. Observing the less-than-desirable food, I shudder, realizing there likely will be nothing else to eat in this snowy plain. I lick up what appears to be a dried carrot and begin chewing.

Whatever flavour there should have been was washed away in the sea of time. Instead, the tastes of salt, age, and other preservatives pierce my taste buds. The foodstuff makes me gag. I briefly shut my eyelids to the rest of the food, for fear it will be ruined by the nothingness I might exude from my empty gut. Once I finish choking down the abomination, I wince as the rest of the bag falls within my field of vision. It looks like it contains slices of dried apples, bananas, another carrot, several leaves of lettuce, a couple slices of tofu, and a bag of nuts: standard military rations for a typical Equestrian army soldier. These rations, however, were still ill-designed to last for two hundred years. As such, most of these items look at least several weeks past due.

I eye the mixed nuts. At least these should still be palatable.

I crack them open. The smell wafts into my nose. The earthy, salty aroma is heavenly to the senses. I have never known what true food that has not aged tastes like, but these nuts seem to have survived very well.

I recall the only fresh-like flavours from the Stable. It was a cheap imitation of food, a paste developed by teams of Stable Eighty-Five’s brightest minds years ago in an attempt to preserve what little food we were able to bring in before they shut the doors. These synthetic pastes were derived from actual pastes made of the last remaining apple, strawberry, chestnut, and lettuce plants available to our families. Just before the Pink Cloud hit, scientists perfected a synthesis machine to replicate all the nutritional qualities of the food product. They could not preserve a lot of the flavour, though, so anything that came out of the machine tasted like a sweet potato.

I had only ever known that flavour.

I take a pale, curved one into my mouth and begin chewing. The first crunch sends a flavour explosion like I have never known into my senses. The earthy aroma, the salty flavour, the firm texture… it is as water to a desert wanderer. I slow my chewing right down, forgetting all the troubles of the past.

That was called a cashew, my brain tells me in the middle of my reverie.

How did I know that?

I ponder the question for a second as I swallow, the flavour of the cashew, as well as the beautiful nut itself, disappearing into obscurity. I eye the remaining nuts predatorily, an evil grin caressing my face, the previous question all but forgotten as fast as it had sprung up.

My stomach called, and it is not going to be denied.

Ten minutes later, I walk out of the tent with small flecks of foodstuff caressing my face, closed eyes and a big smile telling the world that all my troubles from the previous day have been forgotten with one simple meal. I knew what I had lost, and I knew that I had a lot of learning to do, but there was no point living in the past, right? A mare’s gotta move forward!

WHAM!

I find myself flopped over onto my side. My head and side both hurt. I wince.

“Watch it, ya little jackass!” a pony with a voice of gravel barks.

I lie there, stunned for a second, as the pony whose path I crossed leans down and looks at me straight into the eyes. Finally, I can see the talker! He’s a square-faced Earth pony stallion, built far wider than he is tall. His windswept mane and scarred coat are matching mint green, with a large white stripe through his hair. His eyes seem to be made of gold.

“Got anything to say, yellowflank?” he sneers. “You’re in my way.”

I scramble to my feet and scurry back. “Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t see you there!”

He steps closer. A couple other ponies nearby also step into the fray: one, a purple unicorn with a dark purple mane, the second, a bright green pony with ketchup-and-mustard hair. Both are stallions.

“Next time you get in my way,” he mutters, “I’ll break your jaw.”

I curl up. Tears start to form in my eyes. “S-sorry…”

“Mine Walker!”

Tourniquet!

The stallion rolls his eyes and lets out a fierce growl. “What do you want, you fucking Steel Ranger?”

The mare is behind him. I can see her looking in our direction. She has a gun out, ready to unleash hell. I smile at him, a little less fearful, but a tear of fear still escapes.

“Leave Gearshift’s last rescue alone!” she exclaims. “We don’t want Shattered Hoof to get a reputation!”

He growls loudly. Turning around, he shouts, “We already have a reputation as a safe house for anything that moves because of that bastard! I’m sick of his merciful ways and rescue raids! He’s dead! D--E--A--D! Grow up and get a back bone, or we’re all the same way!”

“Now just a second!” I exclaim, standing up. “He brought me he–”

“You don’t have a voice!”

I don’t get a chance to finish my sentence. Along with the scream, the stallion whirls around. I see the hoof heading for my face just in time. I avoid the promised broken jaw with a drop and roll. My trajectory leaves me blinded in beige as I roll into a nearby tent and wrap myself up in the material. A couple screams echo across the camp. I’m too busy trying to fight myself free from the canvas to know what’s going on outside, but in the background I hear the same stallion who tried attacking me get run off by a few ponies. I pick out the words “pervert” and “bastard” in the mix.

By the time I’m out of the canvas, only Tourniquet and I are left standing by the fallen tent. I blush as I see the assembly inside. Two beds are laid out near one of the tent poles. A couple of hoofcuffs are strapped to them. A whip and some bottles of some kind of gel are littered on the ground. The bed looks wet and sticky. Pools of white material are sequestered in the center of the bed.

I blush as Tourniquet chuckles. “It’s alright,” she says. “You get used to it in Shattered Hoof.”

That doesn’t make me feel any more comfortable. She looks me over and nods toward a nearby tent. I follow her.

“My next tour’s not for a couple hours,” she says. “Let’s sit down and have a drink.”

I totally forgot about water, I think, suddenly feeling the parched and dry throat that had been neglected for a while. “That would be great, Tourniquet.”

I can’t see what she’s doing with her face, but her tone’s brightened. “While we’re walking,” she says, “tell me about yourself. I don’t think Shift gave me your name before he…”

“He never got it,” I say. “He told me his name, but he never got mine.”

We pass through the entry towards a makeshift bar with crates of two-hundred-year-old cider and many other types of liquor behind it, including a house brand I can’t pronounce.

Tourniquet nods. “That was his way. He’d give out his name to whoever asked, but he had trouble remembering others. He only remembered my name because we grew up together. We were both children of ponies stranded in the land of the zebras during the war, orphans of circumstance beyond our control.”

We are briefly interrupted as we take our seats. Tourniquet orders a beer. I request a glass of water.

“When he heard of this place, Gearshift found a way to get here, then swept me off to Shattered Hoof, a place of eternal cold, and yet eternal warmth. I’ve lived here ever since, even starting up a branch of the Steel Rangers here. He never agreed with their methods, but their hearts are in the right place… was always a bone of contention between us…” As her sentence tapers off, she looks down into her beer and sighs. “Now he’s gone…”

I place a hoof on her cold metal one. “He seemed like a nice guy.”

“If you knew him for an hour, you knew him for life,” she says with a “chuggle”, a half chuckle, half mechanical chugging. “His virtue was mercy, and he was transparent about it. It was the most powerful weapon we had. The zebras respected him for it. They stayed away from Shattered Hoof because of him. He was the most forgiving pony I had ever seen. You and he could be shooting each other’s faces off in battle in the morning, then trade raiding stories with him over lunch.”

“Oh, get over your pathetic sob story, you stupid robot pony,” a voice shouts.

A wind blows in from a suddenly-open doorway. The very same voice I had already learned to dislike now speaks with open hostility towards us. Mine Walker has four ponies with him, all smiling with dark sneers. I begin feeling uncomfortable. Within a couple strides, all four ponies surround me and Tourniquet.

Yup. Definitely uncomfortable.

“Without Shift here, there’s a hole at the top,” the one at the rear says, a large, muscular brown stallion with spiked pink hair. “We aim to lead.”

Tourniquet growled. “You… you’re kidding!”

Oh buck. Not again!

“Not on yer life,” the one to the right of Mine Walker, a sandy-colored mare with the mane of an icicle and a drawl, says.

Are we…

“Pledge your allegiance to me,” the leader declares while lifting a machine gun to our heads, “or get the hell outta Shattered Hoof… foreigners.”

We are, aren’t we?

I look over at Tourniquet. Her armour is quaking with rage. “You… I… H-how dare you…!”

Mine Walker cocks the gun. “Bow, fuckers.”

Tourniquet growls again. “Pony.”

I realize she’s talking to me. I stand at attention.

“Let’s just leave.” She’s sounding defeated. “Let’s let them run Big Macintosh’s legacy to dust.”

The pony to the left, a gaunt black and red pony with an eternally downtrodden face and piercings everywhere, growls his first words: “A dead time for a dead pony.”

Yup. Another town bites the dust. I’m beginning to wonder if only dishonest ponies get any breaks in this world I’ve been quite literally tossed into, or if I happen to have the worst luck the Wasteland has ever seen.

With that, an upset Tourniquet and I are unceremoniously led out of Shattered Hoof with guns to our backs, thrown out into a world devoid of civilization. As we leave the town, Mine Walker and the gothic pony stay behind while the rest escort us out of what they claim is the territory of Shattered Hoof. The purple unicorn stallion from before suddenly flashes to my side and hoofs me a canteen. His voice is that of a nasally bookworm stricken with a case of bronchitis.

“I shall take them from here,” he says. “You two can go back to Shattered Hoof."

The two guards with us return back to Shattered Hoof. We walk in tense silence for another mile. I don’t dare break the silence. I surmise that these two have had some kind of relationship in the past. They can’t look at each other now, let alone talk.

“You should have this,” he says. “It is three days’ travel in any direction to the nearest settlement.”

Tourniquet frowns in his direction. “I thought you were on our side, Dusk Shine.”

Dusk looks away. “I am sorry, friend. I am allied with whom I am safest. Right now, I have to appease Mine Walker to be safe, so I do so. When I am alone, I think of our friend always.”

“You knew Gearshift?” I ask while turning to look at the walking grape now trotting beside me.

Dusk makes direct eye contact. His gaze is inquisitive. Forceful. “Yes, Miss…?”

“Crusader Candy,” I inform. “Shift saved my life by giving his up.”

“He died as he lived, then,” the purple pony perused. “I can rest at ease.”

“Drop the damn innocent colt act, Dusk,” Tourniquet snaps. Our progress out of Shattered Hoof stops. Tourniquet is looking at Dusk with a very threatening pose. I step back to get out of the way of her guns. She continues. “Mine Walker sent you out here. Why?”

Dusk, bewildered, steps back. “I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Back with the Guards, you said that you were there to relieve them,” Tourniquet said. “What is Mine Walker trying to do? Rub it in that he has everything I came to care for?”

Dusk’s pose goes from peaceful to aggressive in one motion, and his voice adjusts to match. “Okay! Okay! I lied! I lied, Tournie! I had to see how you were doing before you left! Mine Walker was not going to allow me to see you off, so I disobeyed him to see you! That is why I am out here! I was hoping you would have picked up on that, but I guess not. I guess it was too much for me to see the last of my two closest living friends off, likely for the last t-time.” Dusk broke down completely. “Tournie, I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Tourniquet goes stone silent. I can’t tell what she’s thinking because of her mask. Finally, a sound reverberates from her metal case.

“How many followers does he have?” she asks.

Dusk’s eyes immediately roll, but in the way that he is counting in his head. His eyes bounce along the top of his sockets, adding figures I can’t guess. He finally closes his eyes, lifts up a hoof, then two, then sets them back down. He twirls his mane, then begins counting the strands in his hair.

“…divide by the square root of minus-thirty-four…” he mumbles.

Impossible. I smile, proud of my math.

Tourniquet groans and snaps, “Just get on with it!”

“He has about sixty-three who listen to his commands,” Dusk says after a brief chuckle.

Impossible. I squeak in shock. “That’s an imaginary number, right?” I ask.

Dusk shakes his head. “As real as they come. That negative square root was just to fool you.” He chuckles again.

Tourniquet and I lock eyes and groan as we synchronically roll them. Wise guy…

“Anyway, Tournie, he has sixty-three ponies,” he repeats.

Tourniquet groans. “How many did Gearshift have before he kicked the bucket?”

“Fifty-seven.”

“Damn!” Tourniquet screams. “This was coming anyway! Oh, for the love of fucking Luna’s holy plot!”

I look at Dusk and point back at my flailing, screaming, cursing traveling companion. “What’s she on about?”

Dusk sighs. “It is a big political mess. Mine Walker and Gearshift were the two most popular ponies in Shattered Hoof. When the last leader left, Mine took over as leader. He was successful for a year, but the power got to his head. He began running Shattered Hoof like a military encampment, complete with drills, organized marriages, and even raids. He got so bad that anyone who did not operate under his strict command was excommunicated and exiled. The local bottle cap economy was regulated to the point that only zebra bones were used as currency and the only way to buy anything was through the black market. Enough ponies were upset by this that talk began to circulate of making Shift their leader. At first, he resisted, claiming that he was just happy to serve the ponies. However, he began to realize that this very quality was what made him so fit to be a leader in the first place. Eventually, he reluctantly agreed. A week later… actually one year ago today, the ponies of Shattered Hoof elected to make Shift the undisputed leader while Mine was away. He restored the free market and several other civil liberties, which made the ponies love him even more, until Mine started his mind games as… what was the term he coined? Ah yes… ‘the yakuza of Shattered Hoof.’”

“So, with Shift out of the way, Mine Walker can now claim his place,” I surmised.

“It certainly expedited his plans,” Dusk confirmed. “Mine Walker had been working on victory by subversion, trying to undermine Gearshift’s tactics by using the short memories of ponies against each other. He created a calculated campaign of defacement and began subtly shifting the balance of power in his favor. There are only one-hundred-thirteen ponies in all Shattered Hoof, so for him to have sixty-three supporters…”

I did some quick calculations. “That’s fifty-five per cent of the populace. What kind of democratic system does Shattered Hoof have: simple majority or two-thirds?”

“Biggest-stick-wins, even if the stick is only a quarter of the ponies here,” Dusk muttered. “If only we were at least advanced enough to have a primitive democracy! No. Shift was working on it, though, resurrecting pre-Royalty Equestrian values of representation-by-population, et cetera. The ponies loved it, until Mine started blaming the rise of Night Mare Moon and the war for it. Sometimes I forget how stupid and sheep-like ponies can be…”

“Stable Eighty-Five was like that before I left, except the pony that took it over had no opposition except me, apparently.” I look longingly back towards the direction I believed the Stable to be in. “In the Stable, nobody thought for themselves. Everyone breathed this beautiful pink fog. We all walked the same way every day, talked the same lines, played with the same ponies… it was heavenly…”

I am suddenly stuck in a daydream of clouds of pink. Walking the same hallways, looking at the same flank, talking to whomever I had always talked to… it was nice. It was sweet. It was…

…safe.